DailyDirt: Biological Taxonomy 2.0

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Classifying every kind of life form isn't an easy task. Technology helps a little bit, but there's no really quick way to scan for lifeforms just yet. Still, there are a bunch of folks out there who are obsessed with tracking and categorizing various animals and plants (and fungi and bacteria and...). Here are some cool projects that are working on identifying biodiversity from all over the world.

Re:

Pixelation, I'm sure the sharks will feel more violated, tho, b/c their DNA is being used. A zebra can't change its stripes, but those stripes aren't directly inherited from generation to generation....

Re: FIRST

God already classified all life forms...and like any good designer he reused good parts across species. Commonality does not prove common ancestor.

Except there is commonality, and there is commonality. For example, vertebrates have eyes that follow one layout, showing common descent, while invertebrates that have eyes haves ones with wildly differing layouts, showing independent evolution. And the vertebrate eye has misfeatures like placing the nerve and blood-vessel layer in front of the light-sensitive layer, leading to more potential for things to go wrong (just ask any diabetes sufferer who has gone blind). This shows that a) Evolution reinvents similar things multiple times, but b) it shows no ability to learn from experience. In other words, there is no Intelligence in the “Design”. QED.